The serious side of video games

Sunday

Mar 3, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Priyanka Dayal McCluskey TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

An 80-year-old woman named Molly entered the emergency room, her stomach in pain. A nurse checked her vital signs. A doctor conducted a CT scan. They ordered a test, which found the woman's colon was inflamed. The nurse and doctor gave her intravenous treatment. Then the medical team got the message every health care provider hopes for: The patient was cured.

The message, in this case, came as a pop-up window on a computer screen. The nurse and doctor were Worcester Polytechnic Institute students Cordell Zebrose and Cian Rice. They cured the patient with a few clicks of a computer mouse

And while the scenario unfolded on a laptop, it was a realistic representation of what happens in real emergency departments in real hospitals.

The role-playing was part of a computer game called “On Call,” which was created to help nursing and medical students train to work in emergency rooms. It tests trainees in how well and how quickly they respond to sick patients, how accurately they diagnose problems, and how cost-effectively they order treatment.

“On Call” was developed by students, including Mr. Zebrose and Mr. Rice, during a 2012 summer program at the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute at Becker College. Medical experts at University of Massachusetts Medical School also contributed. The game recently won Best in Show at a serious games conference in Florida.

Serious video games, while still a small fraction of the games market, are increasingly being used to train workers, teach students, raise awareness of social issues and even heighten brain activity. The military has used video games for years to train troops. Games also have been designed to teach math, teach negotiation techniques, train truck drivers and hospitality workers, demonstrate healthy eating habits, display the risks of drugs and alcohol, and even show what depression feels like.

“Serious games are a burgeoning area,” said Charles Rich, a professor in the computer science department at WPI, which now offers a master's degree specialty in serious game development.

Digital games are a new area for UMass Medical School. While games aren't the best tools for teaching skills like patient interaction or surgery, they have a lot of potential, said Dr. Michele P. Pugnaire, senior associate dean for educational affairs and professor of family medicine and community health.

“It could develop skills in decision making, skills in time management and skills in critical thinking, that are obviously very important,” she said.

Games designed for entertainment, such as “Angry Birds” and “Rock Band,” are judged purely on their entertainment value. Serious games are meant to elicit certain responses or behaviors from players. But that doesn't mean they are completely without fun.

“We still had to make the game entertaining, otherwise no one would want to play it,” Mr. Zebrose said of “On Call.”

Indeed, many serious video games fail because, “They haven't found the fun,” said Monty Sharma, managing director of Mass DiGI. That doesn't seem to be a problem for “On Call.”

Mr. Sharma described listening to people as they were playing the game.

“When they cure somebody, you hear this chirp of delight,” he said.

Video games are big business. Consumers spent $24.8 billion on games, hardware and accessories in 2011, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The group doesn't track figures on serious games, but experts said they represent a tiny but growing segment of the overall market.

Mr. Sharma cited one estimate that put serious game sales at $400 million. Mr. Rich, the WPI professor, noted that a lot of serious games are nonprofit projects, and their success is hard to measure.

“For an entertainment game, the more you sell, the more you are successful,” he said. “For serious games, it's not about the sales; it's about did we achieve whatever its goal was.”

Ben Sawyer, co-founder of a Portland, Maine-based video game consulting and development firm called Digitalmill, said the industry has yet to set a definition for the serious video games market.

Also, he noted, it can be harder for developers of serious games to find their way to profitability.

“In commercial entertainment, the paths to market, they're a lot clearer,” he said. “In the serious games space, it's much harder because it's not clear where the market is.”

He expects many game developers in the future to become hybrid companies, pumping out games for entertainment as well as for serious purposes.

The Worcester students who developed “On Call” didn't necessarily choose to study game development because they wanted to work on serious games. Most developers are naturally drawn to creating games that they, as avid players, would want to play. But after spending eight weeks developing a medical training game, the students said they'd be happy to make a career out of creating either serious or entertainment games.

“I could honestly see myself working in both,” said Breeze Grigas, a senior at Becker College who designed the character art for “On Call.”